Preinstalled iPhone 4S Applications

The iPhone 4S comes with certain functionality and applications built in. When you look at the Home screen, you see icons for each app. Here you get an overview of what each app does.

The icons in the Dock are, from left to right:

Phone: Use this app to make and receive phone calls, view recent calls, create a list of favorite contacts, access your voice mail, and view Contacts.

Mail: You use this application to access e-mail accounts that you have set up in iPhone. Your e-mail is then displayed without your having to browse to the site or sign in. Then you can use tools to move among a few preset mail folders, read and reply to e-mail, and download attached photos to your iPhone.

Safari: You use the Safari web browser to navigate on the Internet, create and save bookmarks of favorite sites, and add web clips to your Home screen so that you can quickly visit favorite sites from there.

Music:Music is the name of your media player. Though its main function is to play music, you can use it to play audio podcasts or audiobooks as well.

Apps with icons above the Dock and closer to the top of the Home screen include:

Photos: The photo application in iPhone helps you organize pictures in folders, e-mail photos to others, use a photo as your iPhone wallpaper, and assign pictures to contact records. You can also run slideshows of your photos, open albums, pinch or unpinch to shrink or expand photos, and scroll photos with a simple swipe.

Calendar: Use this handy onscreen daybook to set up appointments and send alerts to remind you about them.

Contacts: Tucked into the Utilities folder, in the address book feature, you can enter contact information (including photos, if you like, from your Photos or Cameras app) and share contact information by e-mail.

Notes: Enter text or cut and paste text from a website into this simple notepad app. You can’t do much except save notes or e-mail them — the app has no features for formatting text or inserting objects. You’ll find Notes handy, though, for simple notes on the fly.

Maps: In this cool iPhone version of Google Earth, you can view classic maps or aerial views of addresses, find directions from one place to another by car, foot, or public transportation, and even view some addresses as though you’re standing in front of the building at street level (though not every street image is totally up to date).

Videos: This media player is similar to Music but specializes in playing videos and offers a few features specific to this type of media, such as chapter breakdowns and information about a movie’s plot and cast.

YouTube: Tap this icon to go to the popular online video-sharing site, where you can watch videos that people have posted and then comment on the videos or share them with others.

iTunes: Tapping this icon takes you to the iTunes store, where you can shop ’til you drop (or until your iPhone battery runs out of juice) for music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and podcasts and then download them directly to your iPhone.

App Store: Here, you can buy and download applications that do everything from enabling you to play games to building business presentations. You can also subscribe to periodicals for use with the Newsstand app.

Settings: This is the central location on the iPhone where you can specify settings for various functions and do administrative tasks such as set up e-mail accounts or create a password.

Game Center: This app helps you browse games in the App Store and play them with other people online. You can add friends and track your scores.

Camera: The Camera app is control central for the still and video cameras built into the iPhone. Camera is also the app you use to make and receive FaceTime (video) calls.

Newsstand: Similar to an e-reader for books, Newsstand is a handy reader app for subscribing to and reading magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.

Reminders: This is a useful app that centralizes all your calendar entries and alerts to keep you on schedule, as well as allowing you to create to-do lists.

Messages: iMessage brings more features to the Messages app that has been in iPhone for quite some time. Now you can engage in live text- and image-based conversations with others via their phones or other devices that use e-mail.

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